Better Late than Never
"I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art."- Kahlil Gibran
I haven't posted in a week and a half. Yes, I'm still alive. I just don't have that much to say. I'm in a bit of a culture shock state, where things have already become normal and thus life is a little boring.
Here's a picture of a "betel nut girl," the existence of which is a post topic unto itself. (Click on it for a bigger picture.) In a society that is usually outwardly conservative, there are these scantily-clad women in little neon aquariums selling cigarettes, beer, pornography, and betel nut, this horrible substance containing caffeine and nicotine analogues.Anyway. This weekend, I went to Tainan for my friend's birthday. It was a pretty awesome time. Tainan's a funky little city, but a lot of Taiwan feels the same. So far, my experience has been that Taiwanese cities and towns come in three flavors: Taipei, Kaohsiung, and Everywhere Else. You can see pictures, mostly from the club we went to, here, here, here, here, and here, courtesy of my Californian friend Esther (pictured with me).
Taipei has stepped up its little game of playing the line between the US and the PRC. There's more on that coming, I just need to think about it a bit. No obviously increased risk of escalations, given that the Olympics are coming up, and I'm pretty sure Beijing thinks it has more to gain economically by letting Taiwan alone. But I'm not sure how long it'll put up with Taipei repeatedly and publicly spitting in its face, and Taiwan's economy is weakening. At this point, what I think Washington needs to do is find alternate solutions that meet the same needs Taiwan does and allow Beijing to have the island. Beijing could say it was restoring law and order to a rogue territory, and Washington could, given forewarning by Beijing, lead up to the invasion by rejecting its earlier commitment to defend Taiwan given Taipei's reluctance to even try to defend itself. (I refer to the fact that an $18 billion weapons deal offered by the US in 2001 is still tabled in the Legislative Yuan, and lawmakers are talking about decreasing defense spending.)
I've been reading and writing a bit about Cambodia, which has a really interesting history that actually starts before 1972, and soon I will post that to put you all to sleep.
